OzAsia Festival & In Other Words

The OzAsia Festival is coming up in Adelaide in November and is curated by artistic director Annette Shun Wah. Here’s the program.

My Highlights

I’m keen to see a couple of things:

• Punk, Protest, Propaganda: The Political Art of Fahmi Reza.

• A Notional History, a theatre production on the Malayan Emergency and the memories, silences, and exiles it produced. This production is directed by Mark Teh of the Five Arts Centre in Kuala Lumpur and features a performance by Fahmi Reza.

What I’ll Be Doing There

I’m speaking at In Other Words, the OzAsia writers’ program.

• I’ll be workshopping some work in progress on cultural essentialism in the new diversity politics and the idea of the Asian Australian, at the Asian Australian Studies Research Network (AASRN) Conference.

• I’m speaking on a panel about The Idea of India, where I’ll discuss some work in progress on the Indian diaspora in Australia that I’m writing up with Alex Davis - see the Indian Ocean Migration Archive.

• I’ll chair a discussion called Multiculturalism Malaysian Style, featuring Mark Teh along with authors Shih-Li Kow, whose short story, Relative Distance, has been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and will be published in Granta; and Karina Robles Bahrin, who published The Accidental Malay earlier this year.

Speaking of Malaysian “multiculturalism,” given that it was, in part, shaped by the intense reconstruction of Malaysia’s Chinese minority during the Malayan Emergency, we should remember it’s not simply a naturally occurring miracle but a feature of Malaysian life that has been actively, even coercively, shaped.

I have my own review article on the Malayan Emergency and the technology it built to do that reconstructing and shaping, namely its network of “New Villages” or detention camps, into which hundreds of thousands of Chinese were relocated in the first half of the 1950s. That article is coming out later this year in Bandung: Journal of the Global South. It discusses Tan Teng Phee’s fantastic 2020 book on the new villages, Behind Barbed Wire, and the way it helps pave the way for a new social history of the Emergency.

The Harun Diaries

The Harun Diaries is a podcast series created by Ashaari Azman Shah, a GP working in the UK who is also the grandson of Harun Idris (1925-2003), eighth Chief Minister of Selangor state in Malaysia (1971-76) and one-time President of the Football Association Selangor (1961-83).

In the 1940s, Harun was a member of the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA), the communist-led guerrilla force that resisted Japan’s occupation of Malaya (1941-45) during the Second World War. When the Emergency banned the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) and all other leftwing parties in 1948, members of the Malay Left found their choices limited. They could join the communists underground, including in the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA) which they founded in 1949, or they could join the remaining, “acceptable” Malay parties. Harun joined UMNO and made a career in law, public administration, and politics.

Later, Harun served a prison sentence (1978-81) after being convicted of forgery and criminal breach of trust for a loan to the World Boxing Company to pay for Malaysia to host the 1975 Muhammad Ali vs. Joe Bugner fight, while serving as Chairman of Bank Rakyat (People’s Bank). He kept a daily journal throughout this period, which Ashaari is reading to write a book on Harun’s life and career. Ashaari is also conducting interviews.

13 May 1969

Harun was at the centre of the controversy about the riot in Kuala Lumpur on 13 May 1969, which killed at least 196 people, mostly Chinese, although the number is disputed and could be much higher. The riot followed the 1969 federal election in which the ruling Alliance coalition, which UMNO led, won less than half the popular vote, leaving it with a reduced parliamentary majority. In concurrent state elections, it barely gained a majority in Selangor.

Opposition parties celebrated their successes with processions, while the Malay newspaper Utusan Melayu printed an editorial suggesting Chinese power was threatening Malays’ position in Malaysia. On 12 May, members of UMNO Youth, which Harun had previously led, demanded a counter-procession, and by the next day, thousands of people, some of whom were armed, had gathered at Harun’s house. Accounts vary on how the procession became violent and who initiated the violence, and the official report even blamed the MCP for playing a role (the party had launched a new phase of its united front struggle in 1968).

Ashaari’s research is leading him to comb through a range of materials on 1969 and who knows, he might find something new. I’m definitely following his work. Malaysiakini has an excellent story on 1969 if you’re looking for more details.

I discussed 1969 during a La Trobe Asia podcast in 2021.

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